U.S. Jewish Leaders Adopt a Less Confrontational Approach to Bitburg

American Jewish leaders, concerned that continued protests against President Reagan’s apparently firm decision to visit a German war cemetery could prove counterproductive and generate animosity, have quietly shifted to a less confrontational approach.

Instead of relying on street demonstrations and other protests as the focus of their outrage, they now are emphasizing ceremonies honoring victims of the Holocaust and U.S. soldiers who fought in Europe.

In the process, they hope to draw upon the intense opposition that Reagan’s plans have generated among a wide array of minority groups, veterans organizations and religious faiths as a way of informing Americans born after World War II of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

Another Purpose Seen

Others, including Marc A. Pearl, Washington representative of the American Jewish Congress, see another purpose in the campaigns to persuade Reagan to visit a concentration camp and to forgo the Bitburg ceremony.

“I find that what the President is doing should focus attention on the neo-Nazi movement against Jews and blacks,” Pearl said. “We should use this event to sensitize a new generation of Americans.”

In Washington, for example, some Jewish leaders had wanted to protest Sunday in front of the White House while Reagan participated in the ceremonies at Bitburg, Pearl said. Instead, a ceremony honoring Holocaust victims and U.S. soldiers is now scheduled for Arlington National Cemetery.

In Boston, organizers are planning a “gathering of conscience” of Jews, Christians, veterans and Armenians, said Herman J. Blumberg of the American Jewish Committee. He added that the West German consul general is being invited to the ceremony.

Unsuccessful Efforts

“The Jewish community has expressed itself openly and clearly,” Abraham H. Foxman, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said of the vocal but unsuccessful efforts to dissuade Reagan from the visit. “One gets to the point where one’s advocacy becomes counterproductive.”

Confrontational protests, he said, “can be the catalyst for anti-Semitic feelings and bring them out of the woodwork.”

The Jewish leaders agree that the shift in approach was prompted by Reagan’s repeated insistence, in the face of an extraordinary international outcry, that he would go to Bitburg as an act of reconciliation--a realization, as Blumberg put it, “that we’ve lost.”

“God gave us hearts, and he gave us heads,” said Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “The hearts have been heard from, and I would guess the heads are going to be heard from now.”

William A. Gralnick, southeast regional director of the American Jewish Committee in Miami, said Jews are in “a no-win situation.”

Negative Reaction

“If we had succeeded in getting Reagan to cancel his trip, people would have said: ‘Jews are controlling the government.’ If he doesn’t change his mind, we’re in the position of having cast a pall over his trip,” he said.

Several Jewish leaders said they are concerned about negative reaction to the anti-Reagan protests already found in letters to the editor and in advertisements by pro-German groups.

The German-American National Congress, for example, is placing advertisements supporting Reagan’s visit in newspapers nationwide, according to Elsbeth M. Seewald of Mount Prospect, Ill., national president of the group.

In addition, she said in a telephone interview, the group sent Reagan a telegram last week that said: “It almost seems as if Jewish people are attempting psychological murder of the German people and the German nation in order to avenge. Is this any different from the physical murder during World War II?”

Hyman Bookbinder, Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, called the telegram “rubbish, garbage,” adding that it “can only result in the kind of animosity we want to avoid.”

‘The Wrong Way’

Bookbinder, too, saw a danger in being too confrontational, calling the earlier plans for a White House sit-in “an inappropriate way to demonstrate our concern. People would say, ‘You’re right on the issue, but you’re going about it the wrong way.’

“Anytime the Jewish community makes loud protests or takes firm action,” he added, “there is always the potential for backlash.”

Not everyone agrees that the protests need to be altered in tone to maintain broad public support for the Jewish position.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, noted the need to avoid “any kind of violent protest and behavior.” But he added:

“We cannot worry about a backlash when making the point that memory cannot be trampled upon.”